


Si Dormiam Capiar

by xaviul



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Eldritch Nightmare Nonsense, Horrorterrors - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 14:08:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16745452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xaviul/pseuds/xaviul
Summary: "Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before." -The Raven, Edgar Allen PoeWhen is a dream more than just a dream? Where does the line between the dreamworlds and reality lie, and what might reach out to a slumbering mind?





	1. Dreaming Dreams No Mortal Ever Dared to Dream Before

You’ve never been a troll that dreamed.

The psychic miasma of the planet had never had much of a grasp on your mind, on the rare days you went without sopor. You remember training exercises in the academy, of weeks without the sedating effect of slime- the wails of your classmates, all lowblooded enough for the daymares to send them spiraling in to sleepless days. It’d been a hard lesson, but you’d only been slightly more irritable.

You don’t think many of your classmates had ever forgiven you for being spared that sort of torment.

But this had to be a dream, because the city around you was completely unfamiliar. You walked on cobbled streets, buildings made of stone rising on both sides in an endless wave. You had no idea where you were going, but your feet carried you as if they had a mind of their own, pulling you forward. Wasn’t that part of a dream though, you reflect? That everything was laid out precisely the way your mind had conceived it, and there was little to do but go along for the ride.

How many dreamers were aware that a dream was a dream however? And why was this fantasy city so barren of life? You had a bone-deep conviction that you were the only living troll among these pristine streets, and part of you marveled at how your mind had come up with so many minute details, down to the spread of ivy on a wall, but no people.

Why was it, then, that you felt eyes on you? Why did you feel as if your every move was being watched by a presence you had thought before didn’t exist? You didn’t know, but it had the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end. The night was sweltering, a sticky sort of heat that had your clothes sticking to you that just seemed to get worse as you walked and walked.

It felt like an eternity that you traveled on those abandoned roads until you reached the city square- or what you thought must be a city square. It was as deserted as the rest of the city, and you can only assume from the stalls that flank around the square that it had once been a marketplace. Finally, some evidence of trolls, you think with some relief, but it fades once you travel close enough to inspect the stalls.

The fruit in the first was nothing but shriveled remains, the sweet smell of rot heavy in the humid air. It’s thick enough that you have to raise a hand over your nose and mouth, but the scent clings like a film. You back away and hit another stall, turning towards it for any escape from the clogging scent that seems to be following you. It’s heaped with clothes of a design that you aren’t familiar with, the fabrics that were probably once so vibrant dulled by the elements and worn away to frayed tatters that seem to crumble away at your slight jostling of the cart.

The next stall was no better, sun-dried bones that must belong to an animal you’d never encountered before. A skull sat empty-eyed at the front, long dagger teeth pointed in a morbid grin towards you and you decided to abandon your search, retreating from the decaying stalls with your composure fraying. Why were you so bothered, you wondered- was this the sort of thing your subconscious detested? If this was a daymare, it was perhaps a bit unnerving but little else.

You resolved to keep moving, and thankfully your legs agreed with you, heading toward the center of the square. There was a large fountain there, and you found yourself admiring it under the moonlight, a bright white that seemed to glow stronger than the sky. It’s only when you move closer do you realize that it isn’t just white, but opalescent, some unknown veneer casting subtle rainbows across the stone in a hazy pattern that you found yourself pulled towards.

But then you were only a spectator in your own body right now, subject to the whims of the dream even though you knew it for what it was. Your neck craned up so you could look at the statue of the fountain, made of the same shimmering white stone- but it looked disjointed. It was if dozens of different artists had contributed bits and pieces of the finished product, dozens of effigies somehow seamlessly melding in to each other in to one hideous whole. Bits of what you thought must be the figures of trolls, mixed with those of animals and things that must be aliens that you’d never witnessed before. It was sickening, and you were relieved when your eyes finally fell from it, and in to the crystal-clear water that spilled down to fill the fountain.

It was then you realized how thirsty you were, and once you noticed there was no escaping it. Your throat felt like a desert, and you aren’t surprised when you bend and dip your hands into the fountain. The water is so cool against your palms as you cup them together, raising them to your mouth to drink deep. It’s a glacier-like balm against your tongue, fighting the fatigue that seemed to be working itself into you straight down to the marrow.

Again you bend to scoop up more of the water to drink, and its only on the third time the you notice the water cupped in your palms has the same sort of opalescent gleam to its surface as the fountain does. But still you gulp it down, even as the film seems to coat your mouth and throat, and bend for more. The water is darkening in front of you, as if someone had dunked an inkwell in to it- or spilled oil, you decide. Your next drink is thick and you choke on it as it clings to your throat, blocks your airway until you’re on your knees, chest bent over the edge of the fountain. You cough and cough, but nothing seems to dislodge it as your vision dims in to that rainbow-slick riot of colors in the fountain.

You don’t know what you’re doing when you bend down further, head plunging in past that cold ooze, but when your instincts take over and your mouth opens, you breathe it in. And you can breathe, you realize, though the sensation was uncomfortable. It was more like inhaling sopor than air, but you weren’t struggling in vain anymore. Your hands are gripping the lip of the fountain for one moment as you just adjust, but then you’re pushing yourself forward, diving in to the fountain.

It hadn’t looked deep from above, but with your eyes shut it felt like you were sinking forever. The ooze wraps around you like a recuperacoon, but it’s an arctic chill that freezes you in to place as you fall deeper, and deeper. You don’t know how you know you’re sinking, but you suppose that was part of the dream as well. And the deeper you got, the more you were becoming aware that you weren’t the only one out in this icy void. You could hear something- someone, your mind supplied, just on the edges of your hearing.

There’s nothing solid you can make out in the sound, more of a constant hum of noise than actual words. But it seemed like it was building as you sank, buzzing in your ears and in your mind like a swarm.

And then you hit the bottom, and the world reorientated itself in a twisting lurch. You were no longer sinking, but rising- bumping against something that you blindly reached up against. It was smooth, somehow colder than you already were, and you found yourself beating a fist against it. The collision of your fist against it muffled the previous hum, chasing it away until finally, it shattered.

A few more blind hits, and you were able to pull yourself up. You felt as weak as a newly hatched grub as you dragged yourself up, across the ice- because that was what it was, you realize as you open your eyes at last. Ice stretched over the ocean, waves caught in suspended animation in a curtain of ice. There was some form in the distance, a raft of some sort perhaps- but whatever it was, something warned you to stay away from it, from the writhing forms that seemed to inhabit it.

So you turned your back to it and walked the other way across the endless field of ice, unsure of what you were looking for. You felt restless, the air charged like there was some oncoming storm, but you didn’t know what you were looking for among the ice.

You wanted to wake up, you thought rather irritably, but then your head tipped up and you were looking up at the sky, at the stars.

But they weren’t stars. The dark of the night was there, but it was occupied with uncountable eyes, lidless and focused on you. The realization, their attention, stole the breath from you- you stood as frozen as the waves around you, rooted to the spot under that unknowable gaze.

You might have stood there forever, you think, if there wasn’t suddenly a rising buzz, the same as before. But now it was a howl, the shriek of something enraged that tore at you. You clapped your hands around your ears as it reached an agonizing pitch, folding over once more at the pain as the ice shuddered around you. It was cracking, you realized, and blindly you moved away as fissures appeared and spread in great heaves of salt and spray.

There was no escape, you knew this somehow. But still you scrambled across the slick ice, frantic despite the world crumbling around you. The air in your lungs burned, and as you ran you could taste the copper tang of blood, ears ringing with the reverberations of that horrible cry. You ran, and you ran, until every step was nothing but pain.

It was hopeless, you tried to tell yourself, but still you struggled. Until finally you took a wrong step, foot pressing forward in to a yawning chasm that had split in the ice- a merciful strike, you thought, and wasn’t that a terrible thing to think for yourself? You fell into that endless darkness again, icy air rushing around you as you hurtled towards a terrible end-

-and you awoke, chest burning with the remnants of that dream and head full of nothing but it. You pulled yourself from your coon, until you could sit on the lip of it to drag your trembling hands over your face. The cling of your sopor, usually so inviting, felt invasive suddenly you realized, a sensation you couldn’t withstand. You slid your hands across the mess of it, work frantic until finally the urge faded and you were left restless and ill at ease.

The clock shone through the dark of your bedroom, telling you you were up hours earlier than usual. But after that dream, you weren’t sure how much you trusted your pan at the moment- the loss of sleep was nothing another cup of coffee couldn’t soothe.

You still felt weak as you pulled yourself to your feet, but you tried to do your best to put the dream behind you as you stumble towards the shower, hoping to wash the rest of your lingering unease away. It had been odd, you reasoned, but the mind often was- and after all, at end of the night, it had only been a dream.

You pushed it from your mind under the spray of water, relaxing as reason and common sense returned to you. Flights of fancy were nothing to dwell on, even those concocted by your own mind- you had other things more worth your time.

More things than you knew just then, in the momentary solitude of your block.

If only that had been the end of it.


	2. The Halls of Waking and the Gulfs of Dreaming

It had been so easy to put that first odd dream behind you. So simple to write it off as one of those occasional day terrors that all trolls experienced, even the higher-blooded, and to think little else of it. After all, you’d never thought yourself of much of a psychically sensitive troll, but with the Empress’ lusus giving her one small murmur off Ghoulisar’s coast…

Well, every troll but the highest would be affected by that. And if you had an odd dream rather than the hemorrhaging agony that the lowest suffered, those that did not simply die, you should be thankful for it. You’d focused on the mountain of work that had awaited you, and before long the dream had been banished to the back of your mind.

Abandoned, but apparently not forgotten- because as you retired to your recuperacoon to undergo your first adult molt, your mind cast itself away from the change of your body.

To some part of you, the dream you found yourself in is familiar. Not a perfect match, no- far from it. The cobblestones that hovered at the edges of your memory had been pristine, and the path you walked now was more dirt than stone, pitted and rough. You had to stretch your stride to pass over the potholes, your eyes on the stones that remained in the path. Gone was the pristine white, now darkened and cracked under your feet. The oppressive humidity was familiar, but now it held a hint of smoke, the promise of ash on your tongue pulling at those buried memories from perigees ago.

What you remembered had been a hauntingly pristine city, the sort of metropolis that had seemed to be built by an alien hand that had abandoned it. But it was a hollowed out husk that surrounded you now, the buildings scorched and twisted. Breaks in the walls gaped like open wounds, showing glimpses into rooms that when you looked, felt like a violent invasion. Rubble was everywhere, some buildings reduced down to mounds of it where they had once soared high overhead.

And yet there was life in it, the roots of great trees trailing over the ruins in networks that must have taken hundreds of cohort cycles to grow. Your dream-city was older now, ruined but somehow more than it had been. But still it felt alien, and you felt a foreigner among these abandoned streets.

Abandoned, but still with signs that life must have continued here before. In alleyways and the gaps were buildings once stood there were tents, tightly clustered together and looking so out of place. They looked just as worse for wear as the buildings, from the glimpses you caught- meager lean-tos, frayed and battered. But not by whatever it was that had destroyed this place, oh no. This was a different sort of ruin, one that felt more natural to your mind.

But still you felt as if something that had been here was missing now, something you couldn’t place for a long time. It wasn’t that you no longer felt as if you were being watched, the feeling of unseen eyes lingered on you the same as it had. Was it simply the loss of grandeur, that what had seemed so indestructible to you before was now laid low all around you, brought to its knees and bled out like so many others had been in the lines of history?

Or maybe it was simply that you were trying to read too deeply into something that was never going to make sense, some rational part of your brain murmured. The same part that had wanted to put all of this dream nonsense to coon, and now that it had roused again it was back to push it back under the sopor.

It was just a dream, common sense whispered to you as you walked. You knew it to be a dream, so why did you insist on trying to find meaning behind it? There was no reasoning with dreams, and you’d just drive yourself mad if you stuck with this idea of sifting through the images your mind conjured in search of reason. That your dream was repeating the phantom of the last was nothing remarkable, just a memento of another time you had been stressed.

And even if parts of this dream city were different, your path wasn’t. Before you knew it you found yourself at that same city square- though you couldn’t recognize it on sight. If it wasn’t for the certainty in your bones, it would be impossible to know where you were. Whatever had destroyed the city seems as if it took special care here, the buildings reduced to so much dust and the square itself just a crater.

It had been bombed, you realize suddenly as you stand at the edge of the destruction and look in. Your fantasy city had erred somehow, enough that it had been stomped out. But by what? And for what reason?

Again that rational part of your mind started to grumble, but before it could make much of a protest you found yourself moving forward. It wasn’t a dive into the crater at least, as you picked out a path down to the center of the hole. It seems you weren’t the only one who has ever come down here, judging by the footholds you find. They’re too rough to be natural, cleaved out of the stone by troll hands in a routine, spiraling path that brought you lower and lower in to the pit.

The air is colder as you travel down, a slight difference that just seems to increase the further you go. That prickling feeling on the nape of your neck, the sensation of being watched grows with it. For a moment you remember a sky full of eyes, but when you look up the heavens are nothing but stars.

Finally you reach the spot you knew that wicked fountain had stood. Even though there was no sign of it left, at the epicenter of some great blast, you knew. The ground was smooth here, undisturbed save for your footprints as you came near and then finally, stopped.

It was eerie to stand there in the center of the upheaval, even if you didn’t understand its origins. It felt like a wound you were in the middle of, old but never truly healed. Like a severed limb, something that could never return to its original state.

Your body was still not your own, but it was no surprise that you found yourself kneeling in this spot again. But this time it wasn’t water your fingers dipped in to, but the dirt itself. You found yourself digging, shifting rock and earth out of your way in search of something once more. The claws of your natural fingers broke against the stones, shattering in some distant sensation of discomfort that the dream kept you from.

You only notice when they bleed, the bright purple of your blood welling up from the rich brown that covers your hands impossible to miss. It stains in to the soil as you bend in to your desperate labor, one drop at a time, and with it you can feel something in the earth thrum. A constant, steady beat against your hands, one that you found matched the thump of your pusher in your chest.

On you dug, until your fingers encountered something solid and smooth. You probed at the object cautiously, pulling out the ground that had encased it until you were finally free to pull the item from where it had been embedded.

It was, you realized as you rubbed at the clay that clung to its surface, a key. An old-fashioned one the likes of which you’d never seen, abnormally heavy in your hands. Whatever lock it must go to had to be massive, you marvel as you turn it over. It had to be five inches long, and under the dirt it shone silver despite being entombed. For how long, you wonder? And how had it gone undetected for that time?

Looking for logic again when there was none, your mind chided as you continued to reverently chip away at the grime. The form of the key was exquisite, detailed to look as if the base and neck of it had been formed out of dozens of tiny vines, threaded together to make one solid form. The work of some long-forgotten master, you decide as you hold it up to the light.

The bow of it, you realized with a lurch of your stomach, was an eye. You were rather tired with your dream’s motifs, you think a bit moodily, before you realize that you’ve gotten your blood on the key. Gripping the stem of it between your fingers must have caused it to transfer, and as you shift it back to the palm of your hand you look down at your chrome against the shining silver. In the moonlight it looked pinker somehow, so pink that for a moment you might have mistook it for tyrian.

But the illusion is gone as you twist the key over, unsure of what else you were supposed to do here. Was your dream all leading up to a key? It seemed a bit underwhelming compared to the last, you thought as you rose back to your feet. But perhaps you should feel thankful for that, considering what had happened the last time you had dreamt of this place.

You stood there for a long moment before you notice that the earth is still thumping against your feet, a steady pulse that had been forgotten in the excitement. But it thunder against the soles of your boots now, until with a crack it splits out from under you. That too is familiar, you think as you fall into the darkness- was your mind just predictable?

You were without the choking this time as you landed in to what you knew to be an ocean. It wasn’t the same as before, with its frozen landscape- the waters were warm, teeming with life all around you. Only the key in your hand was cool as you struck out swimming, lured in one direction by your dreamscape.

Not that you were the only thing traveling that way, you quickly notice. You pass by schools of brightly colored fish and pods of dolphins, all of you drawn in the same path- and again you can feel the buzzing in your head, humming in your ears.

This time, it’s louder. It’s a chaotic murmuring, and you almost think you can hear words in the mess, appearing in the din and clamor and disappearing the moment you try to focus on them. It frustrates you, that it lingers just out of your reach no matter how you try. You’d always wanted to know everything you could, and for some reason this lack of knowledge gnawed at you. It fueled you onwards, until finally you could see in the distance the steep rock cliffs of some land formation.

You didn’t know where you were now, but you moved towards it without any prompting from your mind. Tugged along like a puppet on a string, you swam until you could see a depression in the rocks, a dark cave face carved through the rock that you paddled towards.

It was yards from the cave that the hum of your mind turned into a screech, a piercing pain that you could feel. The buzz was a mental scream, thousands upon thousands of voices that cried out in tongues you didn’t understand- but you didn’t have to understand to understand the anguish that fueled them. Once more you found yourself curled up to try and protect yourself from an otherworldly noise, but as it died you felt your body forced away from the cave.

You hurtled away from that dark mouth at breakneck speed, but for some reason you craned your head back to watch the cave as it shrank away into the distance. The noise in your head faded away into the buzz once more, but you could hear words in the mix. And this time when you focused on them, they didn’t retreat, as if they wanted to finally be heard.

**{YOU ARE NOT YET READY,}** spoke a harmony of voices as one, overwhelming but balanced perfectly on the precipice of agony in your mind. **{I WILL WAIT. AND THEN I WILL VISIT YOU AGAIN. I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN YOU. SLEEP DEEP NOW, LITTLE ONE. AND DO NOT DREAM AGAIN.}**

The world melted into a rainbow flurry of colors before it dissolved away completely.

And then you slumbered peacefully once more.


	3. Loathsomeness Waits and Dreams In the Deep

You had always been a troll of logic, firm in the belief that everything had a path of sense behind it even if that trail was difficult to follow. Knowledge was the pillar that you had structured your life on, a beacon that raised trollkind above beasts and made you more.

But no matter how hard you struggled for insight on your dreams, nothing came to you. You always had other things to focus on after they came, important matters that divided your attention away from trying to puzzle out a reason behind the images your mind kept making. It had been over two perigees now since your pupation and it still felt weird, presenting yourself as a troll with fins.

People treated you differently. And part of you feels different, a change that you chalk up to your newly temperamental psionics and the way that gazes now had a tendency to linger on your restored fins.

Maybe that’s why your dream starts in the ocean tonight, that new confusion of your position in life to society leaching into your subconscious like the most rotten of taints. You can feel the current around you, the water rushing in to your open mouth and somehow not drowning you, the way it should. You can feel your gills flex and force the brine out, and it’s a queer enough sensation that you aren’t sure how you ever could have come up with it on your own.

Still, you must have. Probably the memory comes from some passage you had read once you had accepted the occurrence of your fins, you dismiss as you swim. It’s hardly worth dwelling on, past the fact that you aren’t drowning- the impossible is possible, if it’s a dream.

And other than being in the sea, this dream seems new. You’re in some sort of tunnel system, you find as your strokes slow so you can look around. They’re more than wide enough to swim through, and lit with what you at first think is some sort of troll-made light. But no, it’s some sort of coral growths that sprout from outcroppings in the walls, so uniform that you feel that they must have been encouraged in their growth.

It gave the area an otherworldly glow, in greens and reds and searing blues. Just enough light for a troll to see where they’re going in this subterranean system. It casts shadows on the walls all around you, and you’re surprised when you realize that there’s images carved in to the stone.

As if waiting for your curiosity to catch, your body drifts over to the closest wall, near enough to make out the forms left in the cavern. The whole wall here between the coral had been chiseled smooth, save for rounded marks that some stonemason had left behind. They were stars, you realized, and planets- though nothing you could easily recognize except to know that this wasn’t the view of the night sky from Alternia.

Your hand trailed over the protrusion of one star before you were moving deeper to see the next. Whatever artist had carved these had a vision that wasn’t of this planet, you marvel as you look upon alien landscapes and great cities that are unlike any you’ve seen. Was this one of the colonies, you wonder? What was it doing down here in the depths, unseen and unknown?

It felt like a story unfolding as you move forward into the tunnel, watching as some form erupted into the night sky. It’s an aberration made so visible by the rough way it had been etched out of the rock, a spiraling mass of mouths and tentacles. From wall to wall it spread like a cancer, snuffing out the stars around it as the great alien cities fell into disrepair. And when you reached the last panels, that endless form reached out for those dead cities until the very last image was nothing but swirling writhing shapes and the gnashing teeth of hundreds of mouths.

It was repulsive, disquieting in a way you could feel in your middle as you pulled back and cast your eyes away from it. But the image of it still haunted you as you swam on, as the glowing coral grew sparser and you quickly found yourself swimming in near-darkness. What sort of place was this? What did it say about your mind, that when you dreamt it was images of shapeless horrors and endless hunger that snuffed out the stars?

You’d never considered your mind to be so dark or twisted. You have seen the horrors of your kind, more than many might have, but you have always dealt with it the best that any troll can. Your race was meant for the shock of violence, hatched out in to it and with very little rest from your way of life. If some things lingered in your mind as particularly worrisome, you had never thought for them to manifest themselves in a way like this.

It weighed heavily on you as your body swam on without your instruction, until there was finally the glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. You swam up towards it, breaking though the surface of the water and into what looked like a massive cave. It was brightly lit, and you paddle your way to the closest shore, relieved to find that a gentle slope has been carved into the stone.

It was heavily decorated, you discovered as you reached it as moved your way up. What you had mistaken for rock was a mosaic under your feet, countless squares of what you guess must be glass swirling in shifting hues of violet and fuschia. It continued as far as you could see, the cave floor decorated in every color of the hemospectrum in a swirl of color that was almost dizzying to try and piece an image out of. Your mind was trying to make sense out of it, but you abandoned the attempt to instead look around the rest of your surroundings.

Most of the light came from pillars that rose from the floor up in to the vaulted ceilings of the cave, glowing bright with symbols that tugged at some part of your mind. They almost seemed familiar, you marvel as you approach the closest one, raising your hand against the white stone. The symbols had been carved in and then filled with what you realized must be a glowing moss, one of the many bioluminescent species that was often cited to be found in some of the hatching caverns. Was that what this was?

It made sense, you acknowledged as you looked around again. It had simply escaped you because never before had you been in a cavern devoid of life, save for in this dream-scape. But only a cavern would decorate itself so lavishly, the work of countless cohorts of jades that wished to transform their underground world in to something worthy of envy.

You just couldn’t understand why you were here. You roamed further in to the cavern, realizing now that you must be in a sub-chamber meant for pupation- the tunnel you had gone through must have been a route out for new seadwellers to get out to their waiting custodians. But why was it decorated so? Who had bothered to decorate it? Only a seadweller would have been capable, unless it had flooded later on in its creation. But that didn’t explain the coral formations.

No, someone had to be maintaining that tunnel, though you didn’t understand why. You crossed through the chamber, noticing the rough surface of the walls, the many crags and outcrops in which a grub could spin their cocoon and pupate. It’s eerie, how silent and still it was. You knew the caverns to be a place of life, of birth, and you couldn’t help but look for signs of it as you ducked into the tunnel that led out through the rock.

Even this was decorated heavily, forms carved out the the rock that made sense to you- of matrons, hooked horns bowed down towards the form of the Mother Grub. They had painted that large form rather oddly, you noticed, as a rainbow of hues rather than the white you are used to seeing in books. But then the stone itself was white, you reasoned, and perhaps they simply wished to make it more visible.

But that rainbow gloss pulled at your memories until you finally abandoned it to keep walking, passing through in to a cave so massive you imagine it must be the main brooding cavern. There was the massive raised platform that would usually house the Mother Grub and make it easier for her matrons to care for her, though it sat empty at the moment in an absence you cannot ignore. It had the same glowing columns as well as torches that stood burning on top of carefully formed stone braziers.

Someone had to tend them, but for now they stood burning on their own, heating the air around you. This cavern had to be ancient, without most of the electronics that most caverns had started to introduce to make their lives easier. Other than the drone alcoves you could see tucked up above in the walls, all the labor had to be done by jadebloods, toiling to bring the slurry to the Mother Grub and to carry the eggs she produced away.

The same rainbow glaze of the tunnels shone on the walls here, on the symbols that you believed must have some meaning to the Matrons but that made little sense to you. This was the origin point of countless trolls and you feel so out of place to be here in the middle of it, alone.

Your feet moved again, and you noticed an odd dip that surrounded most of the cavern, like some deep moat that stood empty. You didn’t understand the use for it, but you noticed holes drilled in the walls about the pits. Was it a drainage system, perhaps? Were you in an area that got enough rain that the caverns had to worry about water moving down past the stones? Curious, you moved closer to the ditch to peer past it, towards that ominous gap in the wall.

It wasn’t that you expected any answer to be found in it, not really. You were just trying to find any hint of rationality behind this odd dream, since you found yourself once more cognizant of just what exactly this was. Even if you had no control over it, the way you had read that some conscious dreamers could. It was rather unfair really, that your mind would trap you while letting you realize the cage you were in.

So when something sprayed out of the hole, you’re surprised. Your body doesn’t so much as flinch even if you inwardly jolt, and you have to watch as something thick drops down from the hole in globs, like tar.

Or ooze, you realize as you recognize the rainbow swirl of it. It congealed in a mass as it slid out from the pipe in splats, and again you felt that buzzing in your head, your mind once more a hive of bees.

And again, a voice, voices, that cut through the din. **{SUCH CURIOSITY,}** it murmurs in your mind’s ear, like silk on steel, **{TO FIND YOUR WAY HERE ON YOUR OWN.}**

You thought for a moment that the quivering mass of ooze started to take shape in front of you, a limb forming before it melted seamlessly back into the pile in a horrific shift. I don’t even know where I am, you think as you watch it, and that alien buzz slides across you thoughts.

 **{YOU ARE AT THE BEGINNING,}** that chorus whispers again. **{YOU HAVE GROWN. BUT IS IT ENOUGH?}**

Enough for what, you want to ask? You’re tired of questioning yourself, of these dreams, of feeling like you’re drowning in waters that offer no answers. If you’re going mad, you try to reason, you would like to know now so you can try and put a halt to it before you hurt anyone.

Those voices say, and part of you is irritated that this phantom of your mind is just giving you more cryptid nonsense.

 **{IF YOU WANT TO KNOW, TRULY KNOW, YOU WILL SEEK US OUT AGAIN,}** that voice responds, with patience that you couldn’t share right now. **{BUT THEN IT HAS NEVER BEEN YOUR CHOICE TO MAKE. AND FOR THAT, I AM SORRY.}**

That ooze rises in a wave towards you, and your body is frozen in place as it wraps around you, that familiar arctic chill. You don’t fight it even as your lungs burn, and the last things you hear are those voices again, lilting up in some twisted imitation of a lullaby.

**{THE ANSWERS ARE WAITING, YOU JUST NEED TO FIND THEM AGAIN. IT IS HARD, AND I AM SORRY. BUT DO NOT FORGET THAT I LOVE YOU, BLESSED OF MY FLESH.}**


End file.
